Orbiter space flight simulator

I really love space flight simulators I have tried many of them, Have you ever tried this:

you may download the free demo here:

Is there any chance that Orbiter could be something like that in the future?
it also support virtual reality devices, so the experience is quite equal as the astronauts lived, maybe people forgot that those that were inside the cockpits were astronauts, so the focus of simulation is totally wrong! this should not be space flight controllers simulators, but astronauts simulators, since those guys are the ones who really went into space, not the flight controllers, so an astronaut simulator should not be about making calculation and using mfd, since it is not in that way!

For me it is all about MFD’s and calculations.
I learn a lot of it.
Flying the scenarios and doing first steps in vessel making.

Then with the help of MFD’s and Meshes, the realism is created by my imagination.
And this is good.

Orbiter and SpaceEngine are all I need. Both of these packages benefit from continued ongoing development, are labors of love, are free, customizable, and have big sandboxes.

With Orbiter there are even more things like an established community and a bevy of sophisticated add-ons.

It’s really incredible the number of different space and astronomy simulations that are out there, available or in development, free and otherwise. There’s something for everybody it seems. I had never heard of “Go For Launch” and with hyper-realistic cockpits and VR support, it might be missing only G forces (zero and otherwise) to recreate the astronaut experience, although Mercury is a pretty limited spacecraft and mission (albeit with lots of switches). I also never heard of Space Engine but it looks cool, more like a modern, VR-ready version of Celestia than a space flight sim. Something like a super-detailed astronomy program with a magic carpet for flying anywhere you like. Looks cool. I will check it out. I’ve also been seeing screen shots on Facebook of a new “Space Simulator” (space-simulator.com) which I have on iPad. The Steam version (PC/Mac I guess) is in development and the Apollo and Shuttle interiors look amazing. It does follow closely the space FLIGHT simulation model of Orbiter (and even the MFD model, which works only so-so on iPad).

So let a thousand space sims bloom! The only problem is finding time to play with (or even look at or think about) them. So I keep coming back to Orbiter in which I at least know how to do some things, and with the 2016 version and D3D9, it still looks pretty great. I can wait a few years for VR.

I suppose ‘realistic’ is the most overused word in simulator advertisements. An iPad doesn’t even have the input devices for a realistic simulation of anything.

The thing is also – hardly anybody actually wants to use a realistic simulation of, say, a Space Shuttle. Given how many Orbiter users I’ve seen complain how hard it is to learn SSU (and I’m talking about a community who knows the basics of spaceflight and orbital mechanics, not some random iPhone user looking for a game), a realistic simulation is even a few steps up.

You need to at least work through

2000 pages of Manual and Workbooks before you have an idea how to operate a real Space Shuttle. And I don’t mean read – I really mean work through. There’s a reason why people got a few years of training before flying it.

Now imagine it all on your iPhone, trying to somehow click the correct seequence of buttons in a time-critical situation, or trying to gain some situational awareness on the tiny display.

Oh really?

I suppose ‘realistic’ is the most overused word in simulator advertisements. An iPad doesn’t even have the input devices for a realistic simulation of anything.

The thing is also – hardly anybody actually wants to use a realistic simulation of, say, a Space Shuttle. Given how many Orbiter users I’ve seen complain how hard it is to learn SSU (and I’m talking about a community who knows the basics of spaceflight and orbital mechanics, not some random iPhone user looking for a game), a realistic simulation is even a few steps up.

You need to at least work through

2000 pages of Manual and Workbooks before you have an idea how to operate a real Space Shuttle. And I don’t mean read – I really mean work through. There’s a reason why people got a few years of training before flying it.

Now imagine it all on your iPhone, trying to somehow click the correct seequence of buttons in a time-critical situation, or trying to gain some situational awareness on the tiny display.

I think you’re confusing “realistic” (as in, grounded in reality, using real physics, etc) with what are known as “study sims” where all features of the operation of a vehicle are modelled down to the smallest detail.

In order to be a study sim, something must be realistic, but something doesn’t need to be a study sim in order to be realistic, as you seem to think.

I don’t think I am confusing anything here. At dictionary.com we get the definition of ‘realistic’ as

resembling or simulating real life:

depicting or emphasizing what is real and actual rather than abstract or ideal

which doesn’t really say ‘realistic physics only, ignore other aspects’. I’ve been coding in a flightsim environment for many years now, and I’ve never heard anyone make the distinction you’re trying to make.

There’s also an obvious relationship – simulating real physics drives the need to have certain instrumentation aboard and to do certain procedures much as it works in reality.

In a simulation in which your spacecraft is ‘always thermally conditioned’ and propellant can never freeze, you never need to operate heating elements. In a simulation in which the physics works out correctly, propellant will freeze unless thermally conditioned, and so you need heaters with their respective controls.

If the inertia computation in the simulation is done by summing all masses in the CoG and faking the inertia tensor, you never need to do trim procedures – if the simulation is done correctly, you need things like trim, propellant dump.

If radio signals always propagate perfectly and inertial units never drift, you don’t need to bother with operating navigation equipment much – if their correct physics is implemented and inertial guidance drifts, you need to actually operate receivers correctly to pick up signals etc.

Real spacecraft are complicated because real physics makes them so – so you can’t somehow de-correlate grounding in reality and instrumentation/operation as you seem to think.

I guess there’s two different concepts at play – immersion and realism.

Immersion has to do with how real a scene feels to the user – it doesn’t have to be realistic, immersion into a game with made-up physics can be excellent. Most often it’s driven by a combination of good graphics, compelling sounds, lack of artifacts like lags or hickups and the right hardware (think cockpit hardware building) – I’ve seen Flightgear once on a rig with 9 monitors driven by several graphics cards with a real cockpit panel linked to the controls, and the fact that you suddenly see scene in peripheral vision makes a lot of difference. There’s even some devices capable of mocking up something like g-forces. And moving elephants probably help with immersion.

In contrast, realism is usually taken to refer to closeness of flight dynamics, operating procedures etc. to reality. FAA approved IFR training software for instance usually has a low degree of immersion but a high degree of realism – the pilot should be able to train the right procedures and get realistic response of the simulation to getting things wrong, but it’s not required that the graphics looks particularly compelling.

The over-usage of ‘realism’ in simulator descriptions is imo an advertisement trick – who wouldn’t rather be the guy who can say ‘I can land a Space Shuttle in this realistic simulation’ than the guy who can say ‘I can land this thing that really looks like a Space Shuttle in this cool arcade game with simplified flight dynamics’ ?

It’s a common theme – there’s far more people who want to be able to (or at least be able to claim to) do something than to learn something.